Hi guys - I saw a similar thread that's quite a few months old but have plucked up courage to start a thread about hurtful comments whilst we are on our weight loss journey and how devastating they can be and thought it might be more appropriate to start a new one. I am so sorry for Sue for the people who have been on the end of these comments and have been encouraged (and made to laugh!) but the lovely warm, comforting responses people have posted on here and would like to get a few of my experiences off my chest. WARNING - LONG POST!!!
The horrible thing is - just one comment can knock your confidence and self esteem and I have had so many of these experiences it makes me feel a complete freak. Unfortunately these are the comments that come back to haunt me.
As a teenager, when I first started to put on weight and was a size 14-16 I was constantly bullied and called fat (mostly by boys) but also by some girl peers and older girls. This was in the 80s and admittedly it was less common for girls to be that size, but I look back at 'photos of me from then and I really wasn't very big although I was also the tallest girl in my year and, in point of fact, the school. There was just one other girl who was the same height as me who was slim :sigh:. Even a teacher, who no-one really liked and who everyone was horrible to (except me who used to stick up for him and tell the other kids off!!) called me fat during a geography lesson. I was a model student, but that day I flipped - as it was totally out of the blue - and I hit him with my pencil case on the arm and called him a very rude name!! I think he must have realised he had gone too far as he didn't take it any further! As a teacher myself I look back on that and think that if that had happened these days I would have been in very deep trouble - but he would probably have been disciplined as well!
As I got into Y11, the bullying and comments stopped and I lost weight and got down to a size 10 at sixth form college although there was an incident when my friend and I were on a bike ride together (aged 16) and a car with some young lads pulled up and made appreciative comments to my friend and said to me 'not you - you're ugly'.
At university, the weight went back on and I went up to a size 18. People seemed to accept me for who I was until one young man, who I didn't know but who knew friends of mine randomly came up to me in the university bar and proceeded to tell me how fat, ugly and unintelligent I was. I was totally unprepared for this onslaught, but tried to give as good as I got. It was relentless and I stayed too long listening to his vitriol before I went home. I laughed constantly and made out what he was saying was not affecting me - but even 19 years later it stays with me. Obviously he must had had a personality disorder but thinking that logically today doesn't detract from the pain he caused me that night and ever since.
Ironically, I really can't have been that unattractive as I had many 'flings' and briefly dated a celebrity who was, in those days, definitely A list!! At least there were some happy times!!
After this I started my teaching career and have had many children use my weight against me, especially when I had to 'tell them off'. The worst experience of this I had was last year when, at my heaviest, I was covering a temporary contract at a secondary school and the children there struggled with someone my size and were a lot less friendly and accepting than most children in Lincolnshire schools (I've taught at over 100 primary and secondary all in all!). They did get used to me as my contract ended, but I felt severely bullied and hated it there for the first few months. Even a member of staff commented on my weight to the kids - and I am at least happy to say this has NEVER happened before in my 16 years of teaching and she was disciplined for it.
In 2004, at about a size 22, a cyclist cycled straight across my path at a junction; I pressed the horn at him fearing for his safety as I had missed him by about an inch. He came back, threw his bike on my car making a dent and started to abuse me about my weight and looks. He would not move his bike out of my path and I had to stop in the middle of very heavy traffic. He continued doing this for about 10 minutes despite my calling my family on my mobile and asking them to call the police. I had been on my way to a meeting with social services about a student and was a shaking, unprofessional wreck when I finally got there!
In 2006, whilst standing on the forecourt of a petrol station with one of my dogs whilst my mother had gone in to pay, three young people and an older man walked into the petrol station and shouted abuse at me and my dog. I was very angry at being abused in this way for no reason and, probably not very sensibly, confronted them about their rudeness. The end result was that the youngest man grabbed me around the throat and tried to strangle me and one of the girls punched me in the face whilst they were all calling me a 'fat' c word. My mother pushed the man off me and the shop assistant, instead of defending me and calling the police shouted at us - not the offenders - to leave the shop which we did. I didn't report it to the police as I felt guilty and ashamed and thought they may say I had provoked the situation by answering back. I wish I had now.
At the same time, I had started going out with my now fiance and we used to meet in a pub after work. He had a circle of 'friends' in the pub who were friendly enough to my face, but 3 years ago we went out into town (something we do not do these days!) and met one of the 'crowd' from the pub. She ignored me but was openly flirting with my partner which I wasn't happy about, especially as she was very drunk and had her arms round him! At that time I had lost about 2 stones from being at my (then!) heaviest weight. She told me that she thought I must have lost about 8 stones and that when I used to meet my partner in the pub she and her friends called me 'the human blimp' and used to refer to me as 'it' because I looked so fat I didn't deserve to have a gender. This caused a row between my partner and I - who was very supportive of me but who is not the confrontational type! - and I ended up sitting on a wall in tears on the way home. The wall was about four feet high and there was a drop below it onto rubble and broken glass. A man walked past us, grinned at me and came up to me - took hold of my shoulders and pushed me back onto the rubble and broken glass and ran off. I wasn't badly hurt but that night didn't go down as one of my better ones!
I did a short stint of taxi driving one summer, late shifts on Friday and Saturday nights and got abuse about my weight from quite a few drunken passengers.
2 summers ago to try to avoid the dole (I am now on supply) I worked briefly for a care agency. On my first night I was just about to enter a client's house - very self conscious in my less than flattering uniform! - when a car full of young lads passed by (slowly) and one of the lads shouted 'fat' c word at me. I memorised the reg and reported this to the police - and this time they went around and 'had a word'. Apparently it wasn't the owner of the car that had shouted it but one of his friends, and he was extremely annoyed that he had got into trouble about it and hopefully passed on his annoyance to his friend!
At least this episode made me feel slightly more empowered.
I still don't think I have listed every single abusive weight related incident, and I haven't listed the 'well meaning' comments from old dears I looked after in hospital when I worked as a healthcare assistant in my student days ('ooh you're a big lass aren't you?', 'that dress you're wearing today doesn't make you look so fat') etc etc.
Have I had it worst than most, or have other people battling with their weight had similar almost constant experiences, but they bury the pain of these incidents abd don't really talk about them? Sorry it's such a long post but I feel a lot better for deciding to 'go public' about my weight related bullying over the years. xx